Chapter 17. Virtual Networking

17.1. Virtual Network Switches

Libvirt virtual networking uses the concept of a virtual network switch. A virtual network switch is a software construct that operates on a host physical machine server, to which virtual machines (guests) connect. The network traffic for a guest is directed through this switch:

Figure 17.1. Virtual network switch with two guests

Linux host physical machine servers represent a virtual network switch as a network interface. When the libvirtd daemon (libvirtd) is first installed and started, the default network interface representing the virtual network switch is virbr0.

This virbr0 interface can be viewed with the ip command like any other interface:

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